Systems that provide search and advertising services allow users to search for business listings associated with a geographic location or area. For example, a user may enter search terms for a business type that result in a plurality of business listings. Such systems typically gather business listing data from various online directories and aggregators such as infousa, acxiom, amacai, etc. Each listing may include various types of information such as addresses and phone numbers.
Unfortunately, maintaining consistent attributes throughout the listings is challenging when the data is collected from diverse sources. For example, the data sources may provide different addresses or phone numbers for the same business entity. Thus, a restaurant listing of a first source may have an address of “W 44th St,” a restaurant listing of a second source may have an address of “260 W 44th St,” and a restaurant listing of a third source may have an address of “E 44th St.” Examining the business data manually would be inefficient in view of the amount of listings typically maintained by these systems. Users searching for particular businesses are thus required to tolerate business listings that may be inaccurate or out of date.